By Valerie Kiebala

February 21, 2019

women in prison

• In These Times reported on the Operation PUSH labor strikes across Florida prisons that began on January 15 of this year, organizing against what they say is the brutality of Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) officers, poor living conditions, and unfair labor practices. Many of the participants in the work stoppage, according to the […]

The following piece is by Andrea May Darlene Weiskircher, who was incarcerated at the Ada County Jail and Pocatello Women’s Correctional Center in Idaho on theft and forgery charges. In total, she spent over three years in solitary confinement, including one period that lasted a full year. Weiskircher had long struggled with mental illness, and […]

The following account is by Nicole Natschke, who was incarcerated for years in Illinois’ Logan Correctional Facility, about three hours south of Chicago. During that time, she was “constantly in and out of segregation,” including one stay that lasted for an entire year. Logan Correctional, which was repurposed from a men’s prison to imprison women […]

The following account is by Casha Russell, who has spent the past eight months in the segregation unit at Illinois’s Logan Correctional Facility, a women’s prisons three hours south of Chicago. Russell was sentenced to one year in segregation for allegedly burning her wife and co-defendant with hot water. (Both Russell and her wife insist […]

The following account is by Nicole Natschke, who was incarcerated at Illinois’s Logan Correctional Facility, where she spent significant time — including one year straight — in segregation. Logan, which is about three hours south of Chicago, was repurposed from a men’s prison to imprison women from the shuttered Dwight and Lincoln Correctional Centers. The prison, […]

The following roundup features noteworthy news, reports and opinions on solitary confinement from the past week that have not been covered in other Solitary Watch posts. • California Senator Loni Hanock’s prison reform bill has passed through the Senate and now goes to the State Assembly. Both prisoners and prisoners’ rights advocates have voiced their […]

“When women are moved to the Segregation Unit for mental health or disciplinary reasons, they are strip searched. With four or more officers present, the inmate must: take off all her clothes, lift her breasts and, if large, her stomach, turn around, bend over, spread her buttocks with her hands and cough, and stand up […]